The Stability EP

Barsuk;
2002

Find it at:

Aside from being a rather nice turn of phrase, this line from the title track
of Death Cab for Cutie's new EP strikes me as oddly universal. That's not to
say it applies to all people or memories, but it does bring up an interesting
point, especially with regard to music. Given that music is a time-based art
form, relying on the passage of minutes and seconds (or sometimes hours) to
make its impact and relay its message, I sometimes get to thinking about what
it would be like to listen to music if you had no memory.

I'm pretty sure I first had this thought while exiting the theater after a
showing of Memento. For those of you who haven't seen the film, it
centers around a man who, after being attacked, loses the ability to form
short-term memories. Without those memories, attachments become difficult to
form, and his life begins to lose meaning altogether. It's actually quite a
terrifying concept.

Transposing this to music, think about how it would change the way you listened
to things. First, you'd have no frame of reference for what you were listening
to-- it would essentially be pure sound. Secondly, if your frame of memory were
extremely short (say, five or so seconds) repetition would become basically
meaningless. In the West, music relies so heavily on repetition to be successful
that I think it would be interesting to see how the average pop song would fare
without that benefit. I've often thought that I'd love to experience music from
that standpoint for just one day, if only to gain a fresh perspective.

Of course, this isn't what Gibbard is getting at. Rather, he's referring in
somewhat abstract terms to those little nagging memories that we can't seem to
make disappear, no matter how hard we try. This is often his topic of choice for
lyrics, but don't think for a second that this is a typical Death Cab for Cutie
release. With these two originals and one Björk cover, we find the Bellingham,
Washington-based quartet exploring musical directions they've never fully headed
in before, though listening back through their other records, you can find hints
of this direction if you know what you're looking for.

The EP opens with "20th Century Towers," a wasted, incredibly slow song that
hangs on the barest of rhythmic frameworks. "I know the conscious choice was
crystal clear/ To clear the slate of former years/ When I sang softly in your
ear/ And tied these arms around you," sings Gibbard over Nick Harmer's swelling
bassline, minimal guitar parts and somnambulant drums. The song's strange climax
comes after Gibbard sings the line, "Keeping busy is just wasting time/ And I've
wasted what little he gave me," when the entire band joins to sing only two words--
"All around"-- in harmony. The guitars become steadily more active after this
point, with Gibbard and Chris Walla each playing a part on separate channels,
making for an interesting stereo effect.

Strangely, the band's cover of Björk's "All Is Full of Love" is both the most
typical-sounding and the most propulsive of Stability's three tracks.
Drummer Michael Schorr lays down a distinctive beat, mostly on his toms,
immediately setting the version apart from the ambient, drumless original.
Gibbard handles the vocal nicely, which isn't really too surprising, seeing
as he and Björk sing in almost the same range. It certainly does not better
the original, but I suspect it would at least work well in the car. Overall,
it does what a good cover should do: it takes a fine original and adopts it to
the band's own style, as opposed to copying it note-for-note.

And then there's the 13-minute long title track. The first few minutes are
affecting, plaintive and slow, very much in a similar vein with "20th Century
Towers." The rhythm is far more insistent and steady, though, and things swell
more quickly. Gibbard is joined by John Vanderslice, who sings backup on most of
the song's vocal section. After the verses end, the song continues for nine
minutes, with the apparition of Gibbard singing far in the background, and
Walla's guitar playing a sparse part over molasses drums and bass. Vanderslice
contributes some synth textures which help things bit, but in the end, this seems
like one case where a lack of musical memory might be a good thing. That way,
you at least couldn't tell how bloody long it is.

The main problem is that the band doesn't really do anything interesting in that
nine-minute span. There's no buildup of tension or subsequent release, and
Vanderslice can only offer so much variation with his sustained synth chords and
volume swells. If nothing else, I suppose it serves as a decent cure for insomnia.
At any rate, it just sort of peters out at the end, keeping the EP from feeling
like a fully realized statement.

For those new to the Death Cab for Cutie camp, I'd say We Have the Facts and
Are Voting Yes still stands as the best entry point, but the true fans might
be into this new disc. It shows a side of the band that we only rarely get to
see, and only briefly at that. Some fans may actually own it already, if they
happened to purchase the limited edition first pressing of last year's The
Photo Album or the Japanese import version of that album. For those who
don't, Stability reveals a promising new dimension to Death Cab's sound
that, in non-epic doses, could do wonders for their future releases.